On May 12, 2021, the first national Cyrillic top-level domain .РФ marks its 11th anniversary. On May 12, 2010, Russia, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia were delegated the first four top-level IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names, domain names that contain symbols of national alphabets).
A day later, on May 13, 2010, at the opening of the first Russian Internet Governance Forum, RIGF 2010, ICANN President Rod Beckstrom, who was on a visit to Moscow, officially announced the launch of the new Cyrillic domain .РФ and awarded the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ a certificate to commemorate the birth of a new Russian domain. So Russia entered a new era in the development of its national domain space.
Today there are 701,634 domains in the .РФ zone, with 92.8 percent delegated, 79 percent or 554,246 domains registered by individuals and 21 percent, or 147,388 by legal entities. Russian nationals registered 92.9 percent of all the domains.
In addition, 24.6 percent or 172,826 domains are less than one year old, and 15.5 percent or 108,117 domains are older than 10 years. On average, 480 domains are registered per day. In total, 2,316,195 domain names have been registered since the launch of the .РФ domain.
.РФ domain names are governed by 335,826 administrators: 78 percent or 261,890 administrators manage one domain, 1.6 percent or 5,480, more than 10 domains. On average, there are 2.06 domains per administrator.
An interesting fact: domain names with an even number of characters (6, 8, 10, etc.) are more popular in .РФ. There are 295,900 (42.2 percent) “odd numbered” domains, and 404,897 (57.8 percent) “even numbered” domains, which means 1.4 times more “even” domains in .РФ are registered. For comparison: 10 years ago the ratio was in favor of the “odd” ones with a slight margin: 419 354 (50.8 percent) and 406 538 (49.2 percent), respectively.
“The Cyrillic domain .РФ, which marked its 10th anniversary last year, is still in the European top 20 and remains the second largest IDN in the world after the Chinese IDN. The domain is popular with Russians and really useful for the public. For example, the most well-known Russian website with updates on the COVID-19 pandemic and measures to hold it down is стопкоронавирус.рф, in the .РФ domain zone. The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ continues to make .РФ and other non-Latin domains accessible for as many users as possible. Above all, we have an active part in the introduction process of Universal Acceptance, without which the further development of the internet will not be complete. Thanks to everyone who is working with us towards the growth and development of the .РФ domain. Happy birthday, .РФ!” said Andrey Vorobyev, director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ.
